Mystery (genre)

Books often play a big role in people's holiday memories. Some of us receive a gift book that becomes a cherished memento or starts us on a lifelong love of reading. Or a family reads a certain book each year as part of their holiday traditions. We asked you to share some of these memories with us, and so many of you responded that we won't be able to publish everything. What follows is an edited sampling of your heartfelt comments. Thank you for gifting us with your memories. — Pam Becker, Tribune Newspapers Long-lost treasure: For most Italian families, Christmas Eve has always been the biggest night of the year; 1943 was no different. As tradition went, gifts were...

Related "Mystery (genre)" Articles

Books often play a big role in people's holiday memories. Some of us receive a gift book that becomes a cherished memento or starts us on a lifelong love of reading. Or a family reads a certain book each year as part of their holiday traditions. We...

Early in her career as an author, Libby Fischer Hellmann had written three unpublished novels, and thought she was hot stuff.
Then her agent told her she needed to change her writing, her characters and her voice, and while she was at it, she needed to...

If there were a Mount Rushmore of English crime fiction, it would feature the chiseled faces of Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. (Yes, all women, but that's another essay.) Of this august quartet, Rendell is perhaps the...

I'm usually reading four or five books at a time. At the moment, I'm in the middle of Husain Haddawy's enchanting translation of “The Arabian Nights” (forget Cervantes and Sterne — this is where postmodernism begins); Jean-Luc Marion's...

Children in my neighborhood were constantly being orphaned. You go out one afternoon to play, and bam! Your parents are dead in a car accident and you are forced to live in a tree fort of your own making, eating blackberries and otherwise sharpening...

"From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" by E.L. KonigsburgEvery child fantasizes about running away from home to teach his or her parents a lesson. One summer, 12-year-old Claudia showed me exactly how it could be done, in comfort...

In the early days of their marriage a few years ago, Chicago attorney Brett Nolan and his wife, the thriller novelist Gillian Flynn, were having drinks with a group of friends when Flynn posed a surprising question. "Does anybody have any idea,"...

What are your summer plans? Plenty of people prefer some quiet, idle time in a hammock or lounging beside the body of water of their choice. And what better time to relax with a good book? Here is a selection of books to keep you occupied no matter...

Like many journalists, Nancy Bilyeau dreamed of writing a novel. She even managed to eke out a few chapters, melding her two great loves of Tudor history and mystery thrillers.
But whenever she would make a little headway, the real world — her demanding...

Since at least 1976, the woman who calls herself Seven has lived without a formal identity.
She says she's 71 years old and a lifelong Cubs fan. She has fleeting childhood memories of visiting the Indiana Dunes but can recall little else and suffers...

Music critic and author Dwayne Robinson, a middle-aged black man, has been murdered with a box cutter, and his friend, D, wants to know whodunit. When Dwayne shows up at the front door of D Security, D's office, wearing a bloody beige trench coat and a...

Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968) knew his way around two things: rock-hard prose and stone-cold corpses.
He was a wizardly writer of mysteries, a man who could ratchet up the menace and dread by steady, excruciating degrees. His sentences were of the...

When Tasha Alexander strolls the streets of Chicago, she doesn't much see Wrigley Field or the Chicago River or Logan Square. Or Honda Civics.
She sees St. Paul's Cathedral and the River Thames and Belgrave Square and hansom cabs.
Alexander's...

How survivors of the Chicago Fire sought scapegoats 140 years ago
Even as the embers of the Chicago Fire cooled, the saga of Mrs. O'Leary began. For 140 years, she has been alternately accused and exonerated of setting off the inferno that consumed...

At the moment in David Henry Hwang's "Chinglish" when Sino-American business relations develop to the point a Chinese buyer and a U.S. seller find themselves in bed together, you get a sudden flashback to "M. Butterfly." That brilliant...

Whether you are a hockey fan, enjoy mysteries and intrigue, or try never to miss a CSI episode, this story has it all.With Thursday’s one-year anniversary of the Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup triumph fast approaching, a question has lingered for many Hawks fans...

Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Kurt Wallander?
Don't worry, the peerless Swedish police detective, the pride of the force in rural Ystad, doesn't get ruthlessly gunned down like Edward G. Robinson's Rico Bandello in "Little Caesar." It's...

I don't meet many magicians these days and that's a shame.
Magicians are among my favorite people and Chicago has a lengthy and colorful history with magic and those who practice it. It wasn't so long ago that I sat with a magician named Walter...

Gore Vidal was impossible to categorize, which was exactly the way he liked it. The reading public knew him as a literary juggernaut who wrote 25 novels —from the historical "Lincoln" to the satirical "Myra Breckinridge" — and volumes...

Jon LordDeep Purple keyboard player
Jon Lord, 71, a British keyboardist for Deep Purple and Whitesnake, died in London on Monday of a pulmonary embolism after a battle with pancreatic cancer, said a statement on his official website.
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